The North American premiere of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Wizard of Oz" is set for the new year at Toronto's Ed Mirvish Theatre, where a pair of grandMA2s will be on hand to control lighting and video for the new musical. A.C.T Lighting is the exclusive distributor of grandMA2 in North America.
Developed from the timeless 1939 MGM screenplay, the new production opened in London's West End earlier this year. It features all the beloved characters and songs from the classic film plus new compositions by Webber and Tim Rice - their first partnership in decades. A.C.T Lighting Canada, in Toronto, supplied the grandMA2s to programmer Joe Allegro of Artistic Illuminations. Hugh Vanstone is the show's lighting designer.
"The show was originally on grandMAs, but we decided to move all the lighting and video to grandMA2s when the show was remounted in Toronto," says Allegro. "The decision was based on the length of the show commitment: eight months in Toronto and then on tour. In terms of hardware, the grandMA2 is a new platform and very solid; 99 percent of the information from the original production has come across."
Allegro is particularly pleased with the grandMA2s' performance with the musical's video content. "It's a lot more flexible on the video side," he says. "The biggest benefit is being able to manipulate video through Art-Net and being able to communicate between lighting and video so that multiple teams can work independently of one another.
"We're very pleased with the grandMA2s, which have been working great," Allegro reports. "It's been a fantastic experience for us."
The lighting package for "The Wizard of Oz" was supplied by Christie Lights and the video package by Sound Associates.
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